Update on the Public Domain 2024

When a work (of art, music, or literature) enters the public domain, it loses copyright protection, giving wider society the opportunity to use the content. To make calculating new entries into the Public Domain slightly easier, many countries choose the year following the death of a creator to list works entering the public domain. Confusingly …

Beaufoy Merlin Showman and Photographer

In 1951 one of Australia’s most significant collections of nineteenth-century photographs was found in a garden shed in Chatswood, Sydney.1 The 3700 glass plate negatives had been gathering dust for some 80 years after being moved from the North Shore mansion of Bernard Holtermann by his son Leonard.2 Most of the negatives were taken between …

Old East India Company Windmill, Government Domain, Sydney

Old Windmill. Government Domain, Sydney, 1836, lithograph, by J.G. Austin, State Library of New South Wales, PXA 662p In the early days of Sydney, this windmill stood in the Domain near Government House stables. Its exact position was close to the statue of a huntsman with dogs by Henri Alfred Jacquemart, which is still in …

Museum Exhibitions – some new approaches

Castle Hill Stores, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, photo by Geoff Barker, 2009  Given the current level of interest within the museum surrounding exhibition development I thought it could be an opportune time to blog about this vital area of museum work and look at how some museums have been approaching the issue. One of …